TUPAVIEW: Fore goodness sake, world’s worst golfer

By Mike Tupa
Bartlesville Area Sports Report Column

I used to be an exceptional road runner — we’re talking 40 years ago.

But in other sports, my skills peaked somewhere between mediocre to average.

I could outrun anyone end to end all night long on a basketball court and I did a strong job on lower wing defense in a 2-3— but my shooting was like a blind squirrel that nets an occasional chestnut, I was to passing what the Venus De Milo statue is to modeling gloves and I laid the ball up like a brick.

In baseball/softball, I swung a statue being twisted around by a strong wind — although, I do have to admit I once hit three doubles in a company slowpitch game in California. Sometimes I had my moments at the plate, but mostly I looked like a scarecrow with a stick glued to its sleeve.

I actually was a decent first baseman/outfielder as I got older — but many catches were an adventure, many throws looked more like a shot put heave — and just as far.

I actually had a talent in catching a football — as long as I didn't have to try to fake out or burst past a defender. Even in my younger years, I couldn’t fake out a fire hydrant. Honestly, I could zing a ball pretty accurately — as long as it didn’t have to travel more than 20 yards.

There’s nothing worse than a narcissistic sports warrior who thinks he could be really good — except I never fooled myself into thinking I was exceptional, other than distance running. 

In fairness to myself, I always just enjoyed ball sports for the competition, the fellowship, the fun of running around, the effort to get it right.

Running turned out to be my sports identity. More than once I won our company Physical Fitness Tests in the Marine Corps, even reaching 16:50 for one cross country 5K. I eventually would have run much faster but my third and fourth knee surgeries robbed from me the one sport I had really been good at.

As an anthesis to my running was golf — a sport I’m convinced I owned the worst game in the world. In the 20-or-so 18-hole rounds I muddled through, I racked up exactly one regulation par. It happened on the military links at the Parris Island base on the South Carolina coast. My third shot ended up off the green about five yards on an uphill lie about 40 yards away from the pin.

I took out my putter and whacked the ball — it traveled like a rocket right into the hole. Not only was that my lone par — one could probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of bogeys I achieved.

A Marine Corps roommate named Smith introduced me to the sport — I’m not sure the golf gods ever forgave him.

My experiences were eclectic. I disregarded a “fore” and a low line drive shot slammed into my chest. Had I not managed to deflect part of the blow with my arm it might have really hurt!

I once nearly became alligator food on the Parris Island course. One of the holes featured a tee box on a rise over a literal piece of swamp, about 100 to 150 yards long, which the full-grown slimy creature called home. Once, my first shot barely cleared the opposite end of the water. As I walked around it, my body and mind froze as I watched the alligator positioned on the edge. 

He shot into the water while I stopped and brought my iron to port arms.

It’s no surprise that once I blasted a drive off a branch of a tree a little bit down course and the ball ricocheted off the branch and flew the opposite way over our heads, and landed about 20 yards behind the tee box. Small wonder I never broke 120 for 18 — or 62 for nine.

My handicap had to be measured with a compass.

It was several years ago — in Bartlesville — when I knew the curtain had fallen on my golden pursuit of the little white pellet.

One day my reporter at the time — Johnathan — and I headed out to Adams Country Club to indulge in an afternoon nine-round version of the sport of kings. 

For Johnathan — one of the nicest, most quietly competent people I’ve ever known — it was his first links’ excursion.

And I was to be his teacher.

The thermometer hovered around 100-plus degrees. I remained dressed in my office gear, including a black sweater vest. I didn’t need to take it off. Why?

Cart? I didn’t need no stinkin’ cart. I had never used a golf cart in my life. Of course, it had been about 25 years and 80-or-more pounds less since I had journeyed around a regulation golf course while carrying a bag.

My memories of succeeding events have been scrambled — mercifully — by the frying sun of that day and the decades that have followed.

We started out at No. 1, where I tutored Johnathan with my whole array of golf expertise and matchless style. He actually displayed a raw affinity for the game. Had we completed that nine-hole tour he would have beat me.

My drives stunned onlookers — they wondered how somebody with arms and a base as hefty as mine could resemble Barney Fife putts. 

I don’t remember if we let one or two people behind us play through. I think I produced more strokes than a swimmer crossing the English Channel. 

One of my best assets as a golfer had been never losing my ball — with few exceptions, it never went further off the tee than elephant spit. At least my drives were as straight as straws. And not much longer. I would have been better off using a pool cue.

As I trudged forward the yards seemed to increase in size to acres, the sun seemed to bore into me like a woodpecker and my sweater felt like it was plated with iron. Finally — I think it was between the third and fourth hole, whatever the furthest distance from the clubhouse is, I collapsed in a sitting position against a tree trunk, looking for all the world like a beached whale with legs.

For some strange reasons, the guys in the clubhouse were keeping an eye on us. In fact, several minutes earlier, one of the guys had driven out in a cart and offered us to use it.

“No, no,” I said, wiping about a half-of-pound of sweat from my brow. “We’re fine.”

But upon my crumpling next to the tree, they sent out another cart. 

“Thanks,” I wheezed, and removed my sweater.

I think we teed off at one more hole, maybe two, before I talked Johnathan into calling it a day on the links and we headed home.

The only time I’ve picked up a golf club in the 12 years or more since I was while sitting at my couch and stretching forward to push the VCR tape back in my machine, or reaching back with my driver and pushing my front door closed.

I knew those sticks would come in handy someday.